{"id":1053,"date":"2013-12-16T20:44:53","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T20:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2016-01-06T17:59:32","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T17:59:32","slug":"book-review-what-should-think-tanks-do-read-this-book-to-find-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/book-review-what-should-think-tanks-do-read-this-book-to-find-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: What Should Think Tanks Do? Read this book to find out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Selee, vice president for programs at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington DC, has written a slim volume that will be useful to anybody who is part of a think tank leadership team. The book,\u00a0What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact<\/a>, focuses on Washington tanks and will therefore be of particular interest to those of us inside the beltway. Nonetheless, the issues Andrew discusses will\u00a0resonate with\u00a0think tank leaders\u2014and funders\u2014everywhere.<\/p>\n

I and a few others at\u00a0the Center for Global Development\u00a0were among the dozens of think tankers Andrew interviewed for the book, and he references my joint essay with Ruth Levine on CGD\u2019s\u00a012-step program<\/a>\u00a0for policy change. He is generous in his comments,\u00a0not only about the CGD but about the half-dozen or so other think tanks he\u00a0profiles. It\u2019s a\u00a0congenial approach makes the book a pleasure to read.\u00a0I found myself eagerly highlighting ideas and lessons from other DC tanks that could improve how we do things here at CGD. I wish\u00a0this book existed\u00a0when I joined CGD back in 2004.<\/p>\n

As his sub-title suggests, Andrew is a big believer in strategy, and he outlines a five-step process (Mission Review and Goal Setting; Program Planning; Audience Segmentation and Communication Strategy; Resource Development to Implement and Sustain the Plan; and, finally, Evaluation of Outputs and Outcomes). So it seems surprising that he\u00a0includes\u00a0CGD\u00a0prominently\u00a0among the examples to be emulated. We are\u00a0emphatically\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0much for strategy, as\u00a0Todd Moss<\/a>\u00a0and I explain in a forthcoming CGD essay on\u00a0the\u00a012 lessons we have gleaned from the Center\u2019s first 12 years:<\/p>\n

We are often asked for our Strategic Plan and draw quizzical looks when we say we don\u2019t have one. In fact, we deliberately don\u2019t \u201cplan\u201d upstream beyond encouraging senior staff to articulate their major areas of work and expected outputs so we can match them with funding. Using research to affect policy decisions and development outcomes is rarely linear. Opportunities for impact are almost always hard to predict. Our strategy, so to speak, is to be ready to react to the sudden appearance of a policy window by having a good stock of well-researched ideas and providing our fellows space to respond.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How to make sense of this seeming contradiction? Part of the answer lies in terminology. One of the\u00a012\u00a0lessons in my joint essay with Todd states: \u201cArticulate a clear and inspiring mission.\u201d We feel strongly that our mission\u2014improving the policies of the rich and powerful that influence development outcomes and limit or enhance the opportunities of poor people in developing countries\u2014has been an important ingredient in CGD\u2019s success. \u00a0It\u2019s the foundation for all we do, and it corresponds neatly to Andrew\u2019s first step.<\/p>\n

Another part of the answer concerns the difference between writing a coherent description of a process and how that process is actually lived and experienced. While we deny having a strategy, and our president, Nancy Birdsall is quoted to this effect in Andrew\u2019s book, in practice we\u00a0regularly attempt\u00a0each of the actions described in Andrew\u2019s five-part strategy. We just don\u2019t do them in anything that would look like a sequence: all the steps are going on all the time.<\/p>\n

And it turns out that\u2019s been Andrew\u2019s experience, too (p. 93, emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Most of the time the five steps we have laid out in this book seem to happen simultaneously with limited sequencing or time to devote to each. Trust me, I understand. I started this book originally as a way to keep up with the strategic planning steps I had committed to with our board.\u00a0I was really just trying to create order out of the chaos of my days<\/b>\u2026 Perhaps the most important lesson from truly strategic institutions and programs is not that they do things in a neat, perfect order but rather than they have built feedback loops into their work that allow them to do the five steps of a strategic process on an ongoing basis with little extra effort.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To which I say, Amen. Except that\u00a0there are some particularly chaotic days when the\u00a0extra effort doesn\u2019t seem so little.<\/p>\n

[For more on strategy please visit\u00a0Strategic Plans: A simple\u00a0version<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawrence MacDonald has written a post reflecting on Andrew Selee’s new book, “What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact”. He argues that having a strategy can be useful but is not always necessary. CGD offers an interesting alternative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[178,183],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}